The Bee Man Blog

First swarm of the season

2021-05-24T03:34:00.004-07:00

More room for the Warre bees

2021-05-06T12:26:00.002-07:00

Victoria The British Queen

2021-04-04T12:34:00.001-07:00

Moving the hives

2021-03-10T13:28:00.000-08:00

Winter jobs

2020-12-20T11:54:00.002-08:00

Minnie The Super Queen Pt 2

2020-11-29T11:13:00.001-08:00

Wasp traps - which one was best?

2020-10-18T08:06:00.001-07:00

Minnie The Mystery Queen

2020-09-02T13:37:00.001-07:00

Wasps and making a wasp trap

2020-08-04T01:05:00.001-07:00

New home for Ravensden swarm

2020-06-27T20:45:00.001-07:00

Hay fever

2020-06-13T11:16:00.001-07:00

This is ridiculkous

2020-06-06T15:16:00.001-07:00

Ravensden Swarm 15 5 2020

2020-05-23T11:44:00.001-07:00

What to do if you have a swarm

2020-05-19T09:57:00.001-07:00

Bees are a Super organism

2019-09-15T06:34:00.000-07:00

If you look at bees flying around its reasonable to assume each bee is leading its own separate life albeit in the company of other bees, like fish swimming in shoals, flocks of birds.and herds of cattle.
However things are more complicated than that.

The queen only leaves the hive twice. Once to mate and then when the colony swarms.
I'm often asked why she doesn't leave the hive like the other bees and the answer is because its not in her job description. She is an egg machine that the colony depends on and if she left without a replacement the colony could die, so she doesn't leave. She lays eggs and does nothing else and she doesn't even feed or clean herself, this is the job of other bees.
Also, I have been asked if the the queen is the 'leader' of the colony but she isn't. In fact her brain is smaller than that of a worker bee.

Honey bees live extremely ordered lives and the female worker bees have specific jobs depending on their age.

1 – 2 days	Cleans cells and keeps brood warm
3 – 5 days	Feeds older larvae
6 – 11 days	Feeds youngest larvae
12-17 days	Produces wax, builds comb, carries food
18-21 days	Guards hive entrance
22+ days	Flying from hive, pollinates plants, collects pollen, nectar and water

There is no deviation from this. A 3 day old bee cannot decide it fancies a go at making wax, its not her job, and won't happen for another couple of weeks.

The male bees, drones, have only one function and that is to mate and don't make honey or do of the above jobs

The female bees collect nectar and produce honey not for themselves but the whole colony.

Although new bees are produced to maintain the colony the bee colony reproduces itself by swarming.

This collective functioning led the German bee keeper Johannes Mehring in the early nineteen hundreds to suggest that bees colonies were not collections of individuals but a single animal with similarities to vertebrates and mammals.

Johannes Mehring

About a hundred years later the American biologist A M Wheeler coined the word 'superorganism' where the whole consists of parts that are physically separate but functionally integrated.

The Oxford Dictionary defines a super organism as

A group or association of organisms which behaves in some respect like a single organism; a complex system consisting of a large number of organisms which itself behaves as if it were an organic whole, as human society, an ecosystem, etc.

This was taken further by Jurgen Tautz in his appallingly title book 'The Buzz about bees'.
Here he suggested that honey bees were 'honorary mammals' as they shared many similar attributes, such as:-
- mammals and honey bees have a very low rate of reproduction
- female mammals produce nourishment for their young in special glands. Honeybees produce nourishment [Royal Jelly] for their young from special glands.
- the uterus of mammals provide a precisely controlled and protective environment for their young. Honey bees do the same thing with their comb in which bees develop.
- mammals have a body temperature of ~36C. Honeybees maintain the internal temperature of the hive at 35C
- mammals have the highest learning and cognitive abilities of all invertebrates, Honey bees have learning abilities above that of some invertebrates.

And finally.........

When I started selling honey at markets I was encouraged by other stall holders to do various things not least to do a lot of advertising. 'You've got to be on Facebook' everyone told me.
Despite my loathing off Facebook I did so.
I also set up a website here and did this blog.

The problem with the blog software I use is that it limits the size of videos you can embed in it, so I increasingly had to put them on YouTube and have a link to it from the blog.
This meant I had to:-
- do the blog and publish it
- put the video on YouTube and link the blog to it.
- Put the blog on Facebook.

As I have now virtually stopped doing markets I finally have the chance to dump Arsebook.
I can do virtually the same blog but put it directly on YouTube and I will suspend the blog and delete the Facebook account.

So, if you want to continue to see the blogs please go to here
To be automatically notified of new blogs click 'subscribe' and then the bell icon next to it.

As time went o

The Swarming Season is over

2019-08-27T14:06:00.002-07:00

The Swarming Season is over. Its been much busier than last year and again about half the calls were about bumblebees, wasps or solitary bees.
I think the main feature of the season has been the number of times the swarm swarmed again and not all were captured.
I will do a few things differently to try and prevent this happening next year.

As I was warned it's not easy to home the swarms so I have added more colonies to my collection.
It takes time for a swarm to get to a viable size and I have checked them all to see how prepared they are for surviving the winter.

Click the button to see the video.

Wasp attack

2019-07-30T00:59:00.000-07:00

Wasps are the pantomime villain of the insect world and I did a blog about them last year - here.

This evening I took some stuff over to the apiary ready for a visit tomorrow and one of the hives was under attack from wasps.
Wasps had been building up over the last weekand decided to have a go at a small nuc colony that I had set up.

Click the button to see what happened

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kg7nPuD5d6M&feature=youtu.be

Biddenham Swarm

2019-06-30T14:53:00.003-07:00

Although I collect swarms, a friend had collected a swarm from Biddenham, didn't want it and asked me if I wanted it. He had already put it in a skep and all I had to do was pick it up.
Tough decision.

Click the button to see the video.

Strawberry Grove Honey

2019-06-19T13:51:00.002-07:00

Nearly a year ago I was asked by Fliss and Sam if I would attend an Open Day they were running on their farm in Granesden.

I did a blog about it here.

The nuc was installed and was joined by a colony I transferred from Scald End.

In the previous blog I said:-

'All being well Fliss and Sam will be able to offer Strawberry Grove honey for their customers next year.'

I didn't have too high expectations for the nuc and expected the other colony to produce the goods. However being the perverse creatures they are, the nuc has flourished and produced the first Strawberry Grove honey.
The honey has been extracted - click the button to see how this was done.

We expect the other colony to produce a super of honey very soon.

Bees for the Top Bar and Warre hives

2019-06-12T00:44:00.001-07:00

I've been keen to populate both my 'weird' hives.
Because of their structure it's not easy, nor cheap, to buy bees for them, so I decided I would rely on swarms to fill them.

It does mean I will probably have older queens in them and the conventional wisdom is that you should replace the queen from a swarm as soon as you can.
This is mostly driven by the issue of honey production.
You both know my view on this.

I'm quite happy having elderly queens provided the colony is healthy and has adequate food supplies.
They will get the same varroa treatments and food supplements when they need them as do my other colonies.
In time the bees will replace the queen themselves without having me to intervene.

The first swarm I collected for the Top Bar Hive absconded two days later so the swarm in the video is the second attempt.

Click the button to see the video about the Top Bar Hive.

There will be a separate video about the Warre Hive.

Tree Bumblebees

2019-05-30T14:56:00.001-07:00

About half the calls I have had about swarms have turned out to be about Tree Bumblebees.
They are quite small compared with other bumblebees and they often fly around the entrance to their nest and this can look like swarming.

They are particularly fond of bird boxes and I have collected two colonies that I have put at the end of my garden.

To download a leaflet about the bees click here

To see a video of them flying click the button.

Undertaker bees

2019-05-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

Worker bees have a very regimented life and as they get older they have specific jobs to do before they are about 3 weeks old when they start to fly and forage.

When they are about 12 days old they become 'undertakers' for 2/3 days and have the responsibility for removing dead bodies from the hive.
They also remove rubbish and general debris.

I was aware they did this but today I saw a bee doing it from a swarm in a skep that had only been there for a few hours.
Looks like they take their responsibilities very seriously.

Click the button to see the video.

Bait Hives

2019-05-13T15:10:00.003-07:00

As swarms of bees are cruising the countryside looking for a new home, you can wait for them to settle and collect them or put out a bait hive and catch them.

I have put them out for a few years now and generally get one a season.
I wasn't going to bother and I think I have enough bees [yes, I admitted it !!!!!], but I would really like to put something in my Warre hive so I will try again.

Apologies if the video perspective looks a bit odd but its the first time I have used my GoPro which has a very wide angle lens and it will take a while to get used to it.

A bit of hive cleaning

2019-05-01T13:36:00.000-07:00

Bees are very conscientious about keeping the hive clean. Worker bees who are
about 12 days old have the job of keeping the hive clean and removing any rubbish that builds up in the hive.

One of my colonies at Ravensden was a swarm from last year and some of the comb from the swarm was transferred with the bees to a hive box in a frame and was held in with elastic bands.

The bees would then attach the comb to the frame securely with their own wax.
I knew that once they had done this they would chew through the elastic bands and get rid of them.

Today when I checked the hive I saw this.

Varroa - catching and counting them

2019-04-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

Varroa are nasty little beasties. They eat the body fats of bees that weakens them and they spread diseases like Deformed Wing Virus.
If untreated they can kill a colony.
There's no way of completely eradicating them but bee keepers use various methods to try and keep the mites in check.

I treat for the mites twice a year, once in the Autumn and again in December/January time.

Its recommended that a beek should monitor mite levels in a hive so if they start to increase steps can be taken before things get too far advanced.

I do check my bees for mites but I will admit I don't do it regularly enough.
However this year I am going to try to be more methodical and check the mite levels on a [fairly] regular basis.

As with all bee related activities there are numerous methods of doing this and the way I do it is to use what are known as sticky boards.

Click the button to see the video.
However this year I intend doing it monthly.

Click the button to see the video.

I will do another blog about the results and what happens next.